Health advocacy group the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has filed complaints with the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the European Commission (EC) over what it claims are the deceptive labelling and advertising of the Quorn line of fungus-based meat substitutes.
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Quorn, which has been on the market in the UK for years, was recently launched in supermarkets elsewhere in Europe and in the US. It is marketed by Marlow Foods, a division of AstraZeneca.
Washington-based CSPI claims, in a complaint filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that while Quorn is a nutritious meat substitute with a low impact on the environment, it needs to “be labelled honestly and studied more thoroughly”.
CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said: “Despite claims on some labels that the key ingredient in Quorn is ‘mushroom in origin’, Quorn products contain no mushrooms.
“Rather, the so-called “mycoprotein” in these products is actually grown in large fermentation vats from Fusarium venenatum, a non-mushroom fungus. On other Quorn packages, the source of mycoprotein is omitted altogether. Quorn’s web site takes the deception even further and claims falsely that mycoprotein is a “vegetable protein” and a “plant occurring naturally in soil.
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By GlobalData“You can see why AstraZeneca would rather associate its product with mushrooms and vegetables than with fungus, but their marketing problems are no excuse to deceive consumers.”
CPSI also argues that the testing for the product is inadequate because it did not include tests for allergenicity.
Some of the novel proteins in the mycoprotein might cause allergic reactions, says CPSI, a fact that has apparently slipped through the net because it is not a GE food. CSPI says health authorities in the UK, US, and Europe should require AstraZeneca, to test whether any of the new proteins share the properties of known allergens.
CSPI has recently established a web-based form and are encouraging consumers to report any adverse reactions they suspect have been caused from eating Quorn.
